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Siemens’ Gerhard Kress, director of the company’s Mobility Division, has extensive experience in using IoT data and analytics to predict and manage service challenges in the railway industry. He joins MIT SMR senior editor Bruce Posner to discuss how companies that move people and products can capitalize on the opportunity that IoT data offers. Kress will show how the age of Big Data lets transportation companies improve how they manage the multiple challenges affecting their operations.

Competitive advantage from analytics is declining, according to the 2016 annual report about data and analytics by MIT Sloan Management Review. In this on-demand webinar, the authors of the report — Sam Ransbotham, an associate professor in information systems at Boston College and guest editor at MIT SMR; David Kiron, the executive editor of MIT SMR’s Big Ideas Initiative; and Pamela Kirk Prentice, the chief research officer at SAS Institute Inc. — discuss how analytically-sophisticated companies are managing to cultivate both innovation and competitive advantage with analytics.

In an on-demand webinar, Wolfgang Gruel and Frank Piller detail new experiments in personal transportation. Gruel and Piller say that transportation customers are on the cusp of having seamless travel experiences that synchronize all transit options: schedules, traffic conditions, and personal preferences. But making this vision a reality requires knitting together previously independent systems — in part through smart data and the Internet of Things.

For organizations, there is no shortage of hype about the potential for data and analytics. But the reality is that creating competitive advantage from data is elusive for many organizations. Our 2016 report on data and analytics, “Beyond the Hype: The Hard Work Behind Analytics Success,” outlines just how much resolve companies need to make an analytics strategy work.

Using data and analytics to understand the complexities of modern business has become not only common, but essential. Gahl Berkooz joined Ford Motor Co. in 2004, eventually becoming head of data and governance and a member of the company’s global data insights and analytics skill team. Berkooz became acutely aware of how important analytics is to the company’s ability to thrive in the global marketplace. “What it boils down to,” he told MIT SMR’s Michael Fitzgerald, “is that we know how to make decisions. It’s about finding the opportunities to bring data and analytics to make better decisions.”

This new blog from MIT Sloan Management Review explores ideas from different corners of the MIT community that are relevant to business executives. We will introduce you to research, people and events you might not otherwise encounter — things we hope you find useful and perhaps provocative. This week we look at gaping security holes in the Internet of Things and revisit the analytical revelations of Michael Lewis’s Moneyball.

The past several years have been period of exploration, experimentation, and trial and error in Big Data among Fortune 1,000 companies, and the result has been a different story. For these firms, it is not the ability to process and manage large data volumes that is driving successful Big Data outcomes. Rather, it is the ability to integrate more sources of data than ever before — new data, old data, big data, small data, structured data, unstructured data, social media data, behavioral data, and legacy data. Guest blogger Randy Bean, CEO of NewVantage Partners, explains why the “variety challenge” has emerged as the top data priority.

It has become a truism that the pace of work is faster than ever, as digital technologies speed up communication and operational processes in a story of unending progress. But increased speed has not translated into increased rates of productivity growth. Since 2004, growth rates have slowed not just in the US but across the world. Chad Syverson, J. Baum Harris Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, explains what the implications are, and why the benefits of new technologies are not straightforward.

The 2016 MIT SMR/SAS Data and Analytics report, “Beyond the Hype: The Hard Work Behind Analytics Success,” finds that competitive advantage from analytics is declining — but that organizations achieving the greatest benefits have figured out how to ensure that the right data is being captured. In this webinar, the authors of the report explain how companies are making this transition and which are seeing the most success.

Products connected to the Internet of Things are providing unprecedented levels of information that can be used to improve both products and customer experience. For instance, a company does not have to wait until a customer calls with a complaint to know that a product connected to the Internet of Things is not working correctly. Instead, the product could already communicate the information, giving the company the ability to provide proactive service. Result: more loyal customers.

Managers don’t expect to see machines displacing knowledge workers anytime soon. Instead, they expect computing technology to augment rather than replace the work of humans. But in the face of a sprawling and fast-evolving set of opportunities, what forms should that augmentation take? Davenport and Kirby, authors of “Only Humans Need Apply: Winners and Losers in the Age of Smart Machines,” examine what cognitive technologies managers should be monitoring closely and what they should be applying now.

The 2016 Data & Analytics Report by MIT Sloan Management Review and SAS finds that analytics is now a mainstream idea, but not a mainstream practice. Few companies have a strategic plan for analytics or are executing a strategy for what they hope to achieve with analytics. Organizations achieving the greatest benefits from analytics ensure the right data is being captured, and blend information and experience in making decisions.

This free on-demand webinar offers context for understanding cognitive technology offerings. It focuses on what technology capabilities will be available — and what tasks will still require human input. Topics include artificial intelligence, automation, and business rules for making cognitive technology functional. Presenters Thomas H. Davenport and Julia Kirby are co-authors of the forthcoming book Only Humans Need Apply: Winners and Losers in the Age of Smart Machines.

Peter Drucker defined the work of business leaders by three principal tasks: delivering financial results, making work and workers productive, and managing a company’s social impacts. Technological advances have transformed — and continue to transform — the world in myriad ways since Drucker published that definition in 1974. But technology hasn’t changed Drucker’s tasks. Instead, it is giving rise to new and better ways of executing them. This new column aims to help you identify big ideas and new tactics at the intersection of technology and management.

GE has bet big on the Industrial Internet — the convergence of industrial machines, data, and the Internet. The company is putting sensors on gas turbines, jet engines, and other machines; connecting them to the cloud; and analyzing the resulting flow of data. The goal: identify ways to improve machine productivity and reliability. This MIT Sloan Management Review case study looks at how this traditional manufacturer is remaking itself into a modern digital business.

Unlike agriculture, where cutting-edge technologies are being aggressively adopted, forestry and its related industries are something of a technology laggard. But the prospect of the industry using sensors in the field, both in sawmills and even embedded within trees themselves, is emerging. Eric Hansen and Scott Leavengood, both professors at Oregon State University’s Wood Science and Engineering department, discuss how the Internet of Things could help drive efficiency and improve quality in the forestry sector.

From wearables to hotel desks that remind us to move around, connected objects are becoming a bigger part of consumers’ lives. For instance, famed design firm IDEO is using people-centered design to envision the Internet of Consumer Things, including helping to create a headband that lets people measure their brain activity and track their mental focus. In the hospitality industry, smart locks, smart lights, and even desks that suggest changing your posture could all become routine.